The familiar parasol look returned to Wimbledon on Wednesday. Photo: AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth. the time when rain interrupts the game at Wimbledon. Some stretch their limbs while doing yoga indoors, others stretch their minds while solving Sudoku. Jody Burrage, who played on Center Court for the first time, took the opportunity to return to the dressing room during one of the many delays to check who was in the Royal Box.
“Oh my God, David. Beckham is watching me play tennis right now,” she recalled her thoughts. “At that time I was losing 6-0, 2-1. As you please.”
After Tuesday's dump, it was a day when people dodged rainstorms, dragged tarpaulins and sent small armies of young people with towels to mop up public areas. For Tournament Director Jamie Baker, a former Davis Cup player, this meant his eyes were constantly scanning the darkening sky.
“We have a team that checks the weather all the time,” he explained shortly before the start of the game. “We have long-term and short-term forecasts, we almost know exactly what will happen to the weather. For example, right now the sun could peek out half an hour ago. But we know it's going to rain pretty soon, so we'll keep the inflatable surfaces on all the courts until the last minute.”
For Baker, every detail counts: not a minute of playing time can be risked. Organizing a Wimbledon-sized tournament would be a huge undertaking, even if the weather were guaranteed to be cloudless. But this is England, so there is no chance of that.
After a string of postponements on Tuesday, that meant Baker was forced to try 87 games on this rainy, wild Wednesday. Perhaps not a record: in both 1991 and 1997, a century of matches were played in one day. But what was being displayed on the giant electronic screen in Baker's office was still terrifying.
“The players are the priority, keeping the schedule fair,” he explained. «We also check who waited the longest on the day of the cancellation and make sure they get out first the next day.» />Spectators take cover during a rain-damaged Jody Burrage match on Center Court. Photo: Telegraph Sport/Heathcliff O'Malley
Baker has a significant advantage over his predecessors in previous rain-ravaged years: Both the Center and No 1 Court are roofed these days. Their importance became clear on Tuesday as the matches went on even as the rain drummed insistently on the superstructure.
“Two roofs give us solid protection to keep everything in order,” he said. “In a way, Tuesday was a good day to skip the rain. No extreme action is required at this early stage; we still have time to catch up.”
Not that rooftops are used on Wednesday. One of the many things a Baker has to take into account is dew: if things are left closed for too long, the dew doesn't evaporate and the turf can become unplayable and wet. So, after making sure that the showers should be gone by noon, he made the decision to leave everything on the show courts open for bad weather. It was a risk, especially since the elements were at work everywhere, not least on the stairs of the media center, where there were several buckets to collect drips pouring through a leaky ceiling.
Early rain meant an even greater delay: on Court 3, the match between France's Frances Tiafoe and China's Ybin Wu started an hour and 45 minutes later than scheduled. It started in bright sunlight. But just a quarter of an hour later, long enough for the couple to interrupt each other's feed, the first umbrella was raised in the crowd, and the covers hurried back into place.
Covers are released on Center Court. Photo: Getty Images/Clive Brunskill
All the constant failures meant that something inevitably went wrong. After one delay on Court 7, they struggled to get the net back up again. This meant that Dominic Stricker of Switzerland and Australia's Alexei Popyrin faced even more delays. By the time the judges managed to solve the riddle of the net, the game had only lasted about 10 minutes before it began to rain again. From everywhere, players ran into the locker room, heavy bags full of rackets behind their backs. Some were accompanied by officials holding Wimbledon badges over their heads. Some just got soaked.
“Our forecast is that the downpours won’t pass until 3:00 pm,” Baker said.
He was right. This meant that when Burrage succumbed to Daria Kasatkina at 3:01 p.m., it was the first match completed without roof assistance since 8:45 p.m. Monday. Ten minutes after she lost, the refereeing office announced that all scheduled fifth matches on all courts had been rescheduled. It was just such a day.
So you wonder why Just Stop Oil fanatics are targeting Wimbledon everywhere. The protesters, who twice briefly suspended play on Court 18, were barely noticed. After all, it was the day the rain got in their way.
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